Matt Tuckey is a writer from Oldham, England. He covers celebrities, night life, Manchester, fitness, creative writing, social media, confidence and events. Some of this may, in some way, help others. Or maybe it'll just entertain you for a while.

Sunday, 31 December 2017

I
had a great Christmas with the family. I also got my arse kicked
twice in 2 sessions of bowling, but you know what? I enjoyed it all.
The pre-sertraline me would be pissed off at how shit I was at
playing, and would correlate it to my abilities to do literally
anything in life- but the new pilled-up me enjoyed being with mates
regardless of my scores.

I
finished reading The Dirt, Neil Strauss' biography of rock group The Motley Crue, an epic, detailed timeline
of the four members' lives, first released in 2002. Rock music and
it's image don't particularly appeal to me, but I'm interested in the
lives of people who live to excess- who go over the top to stand out
and be remembered. Mick Mars,
Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil and Tommy Lee certainly did all of that. Every
page details the chaotic, drink-and-drug-and-sex-fuelled rise from
broke-as-fuck middle-American kids to chart-topping rock legends.
Consistently entertaining, and sustains our empathy no matter how bad
the protagonists behave (and we all know how bad things got between
Tommy and Pamela Anderson), The Dirt
is a generous, well-detailed 400-pager with fascinating and
frequently bleak tales on each one. I found it reduced to £3 in HMV
too, which was a total bargain.

I
also finished reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey,
which was made into an award-winning Jack Nicholson movie in 1975.
Delinquent RP McMurphy blags his way into a stay in a mental hospital
to avoid a hard labour sentence, and wages war on the establishment-
in particular the cold, formal but disturbingly sexy Nurse Ratched.
The book differs from the film in that one of the film's final twists
is actually revealed from the start of the book. The book is a lot
darker and the mental ward takes on a much more of a brooding,
haunted-asylum tone on the page, but there's still wads of deep-south
comedy provided mostly from McMurphy. A great read.

Next
up: Measure for Measure, York Notes Advanced guide to the Shakespeare
comedy. I gather the Advanced notes are designed to cater for A-level
study of the text, as opposed to GCSE (covered by standard York Notes
books), and the detail reflects that. These books are great not just
for understanding the text, but learning about storytelling
techniques in general. Have you ever seen Martin Scorse's Casino? Sam
Ace Rothstien narrates the majority of the story, but other
characters like Nicky Santoro and Frankie Marino chip in with their
commentary throughout the film. In literary terms, this is called a
soliloquy, something the audience can hear but the other characters
in the film cannot. It was a popular storytelling technique in
Shakespeare's time, allowing more insight on the narrative.

Measure
for Measure itself is suppose to be a comedy, but it's a pretty bleak
one, with a few deaths and imprisonments.

Finally,
with a day to spare of 2017, I bashed through Letts Explore Twelfth
Night. I prefer Letts guides, as they seem the clearest and best
organised, with succinct guides to characters and themes. It doesn't,
however, go into much detail about the history of the play and
whether the screwball plot of mistaken identities is actually a
comedy (Wikipedia says it
is)..
The focus of Letts is on the content of the play, and doesn't extend
to the context of how it would be received in Shakespeare's time, or
today.

Saturday, 30 December 2017

Last
week I discussed using Sertraline, an antidepressant,
and how the timing had possibly been giving me insomnia. I decided
I'd take it at midday, instead of at 5pm.

One
week isn't enough to gauge the effects, especially when I'm off work
over Christmas and there's no need to get up at 7:30. I don't
remember having any particular issue with falling asleep, so perhaps
it's benefiting me. I'll come back to this in 4 more weeks to see how
it's working, by which time I'll have been back in my work routine
for a while and sleeping and eating at regular times.

With
it being the holidays, my schedule- like most other people's- is
quite different, so I've had to remember to bring my dosette (pill)
box with me to family functions, shopping or other events. It's
another thing to remember, which, with memory difficulties is a
challenge in itself, but one I seemed to have managed.

If
you're in a situation like mine- memory difficulties from a head
trauma and using medication for depression- a dosette box is one of
your tools. Your phone calendar is another. Without the ability to
receive reminders from my phone, I couldn't have taken my meds
reliably. So, obviously, I'd moved that recurring reminder back 5
hours.

Weight
gain is a serious problem / side effect of Sertraline, and Christmas
is one of the hardest times to avoid junk food. I wan to enjoy the
holiday though, so I'm not dwelling on it. I'll probably have put
weight on, but whatever. I have plans for how to lose it.

Saturday, 23 December 2017

I
started taking antidepressant Sertraline at the start of the year. It
was a decision I came to gradually after a range of different talking
treatments hadn't helped enough. They had helped me to develop and be
more capable, making better decisions socially and practically, but I
was still hampered by fear and social awkwardness. So I bit the
bullet and, in January, went to my GP.

I
was prescribed Sertraline and started taking them immediately. That
Tuesday, if I remember, I got a girl's number in
Taboo. (Sertraline doesn't get
into your system that fast, so it seems I was just on a slightly
confident night. Maybe it was the placebo effect. Who knows.)

After
this, though, it didn't seem to be affecting me. I genuinely felt no
different. I went back to my GP after about a month and he told me to
stick at it. I did.

The
second batch of pills kicked in. I felt a lift, a rush, in the
sternum. I started to step forward and talk to people a little more,
although still clumsily with quite abrupt openers, but I got the odd
phone number (and maybe more) here and there.

Since
the spring, though, I feel like I've hit a plateau. I'm not getting
any more confident; if anything, I'm getting more impatient and I
don't seem to tolerate the places I used to enjoy going to. I'm more
narrow-minded than ever about where I'll go on nights out, and I'm
still feeling social anxiety. Not to mention, I'm piling on weight,
something well-known to be connected to the use of SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors).

I
talked to support group Andy's Man Club about this. A few members
there have used SSRIs and have also reported weight gain. Should I
change to some other form of medication?

The
short answer: no. There are other drugs like Citalopram and
Amitriptyline, but Sertraline is regarded to be the best (even though
James Holmes, the who killed all those people at the Batman
premiere in Colorado, was prescribed it and was a factor in his
decision to carry out the attack. We can overlook this as Holmes had
existing conditions that were behind his violent decisions).
Sertraline is the most frequently-prescribed in the US and UK,
because it's regarded to be the most effective.

AMC
members also suggested not making any changes without my GP's advice.
Typically, with memory difficulties, I'd forgotten to reorder my
prescription until Tuesday night when I had only a couple of pills
left. They suggested I tell my doctors that it's an emergency and
that I need the pills as soon as possible. Easier said than done when
I'm in work during the surgery's opening hours. I managed and got a
new batch with a couple still to go.

Another
question: Should I change the time at which I take my medication?

I
first took Sertraline in the morning. Thankfully, this was on a day
off: I had to go to sleep at 3pm for about 4 hours. After this I
started taking them at 5pm. Is this a little late? Is it affecting my
sleep? I usually struggle with sleep on and off anyway, so it's not
easy to tell. Should I move it to 12pm and see if my sleep improves?

Well,
let's try that from tomorrow onwards and next Saturday I'll review.
Let me know if you have experience
of changing the time you take Sertraline.

Friday, 22 December 2017

In
an attempt to lose weight
I took up intermittent fasting, a technique used by many in which
breakfast- the supposed most important meal of the day- is skipped,
and the fast is broken at lunchtime.

This
started working at first, and the kilos started to drop. I started at
83.3kg, and hoped to be a whole 10kg down- during advent, when people
are throwing food all over the place. I found myself eating quite a
lot in the evening, even after a full meal. I came down a little, but
never below 81. Suffice to say, I had no luck. My weight went up at
one point, dropping to 82.2 at the final hurdle. 1100g is better than
nothing.

I
have other ideas for dieting that I'll try later, but I'm
contradicting my own long-standing belief that to be healthy, you've
got to keep it that way and not even consider that you're 'on a
diet'- you just don't eat crap as a habit. Sticking with the
no-breakfast rule was easier than I thought, though, so I may keep
that going.

It also helps if you don't hammer cocktail offers on Sunday afternoons, but hey, better that than Sunday nights.

Sunday, 17 December 2017

Why
did the Natural History Museum get
evacuated? Why didn't the alarms sound? Why haven't the NHM tweeted
about it? I have no idea, but on Friday 8th December
everyone walked out of the South Kensington venue. My guess is that a
school group were moving on, and that there were so many of them that
people thought it was an unannounced evacuation and walked out with
them.

Including
me. Weird. Shame, really, as the exhibitions were fascinating, and
the building itself- huge, Victorian-era sprawling halls large enough
to hold whale skeletons and, until recently, a diplodocus cast- are
packed with fascinating nature-related finds.

The
current temporary exhibition, Wildlife Photographer of the Year,
features some of the most stunning depictions of animals from across
the globe- beautiful, majestic and occasionally horrifying. The
section dedicated to the evils of poaching are enough to upset the
most jaded of visitors. It's on until the 28th
May. There's a cost for this section, but it's worth it.

Last
weekend I dropped into London with the parents to visit my sister and
do some sightseeing. I have a list of London activities, so we worked
though a few of them, as well as some other plans.

We
stayed at Thameside YHA,
a clean and tidy hostel. Good stay, with WiFi in reception (but not
in the room). Plenty of plug sockets, but no blackout curtains. Fair
prices.

Next
stop: Food at the Mayflower in
Rotherhite, the oldest pub on the Thames river, which was playing
some contrastingly-modern trip-hop through the speakers. Cosy
establishment with great pub food and plenty of history. A stroll
down the Thames led us to King Edward II's Manor House, or the
remains of it, The Mayor's Office, Tower Bridge, The Financial
District, The Tower of London, HMS Belfast and Haye's Galleria
shopping mall.

We
gut the tube to bustling, trendy Camden, and wandered around the
eclectic and fragrant stalls of food and trinkets. The artwork struck
me more than anything: the marrying of unique designs and well-known
brand logos make this borough younger-looking and artier than any
other I've visited.

Natural
History Museum was a few tube stops on from this, and after the
aforementioned evacuation, we found ourselves heading towards
Kensington Gardens, where the trees were populating with chirping
wild parakeets, past the Albert Memorial, the Hyde Park Serpentine,
and onto Regent Street and Oxford Street. We past the Scouts
headquarters, Baden Powell House, and then had more food in the
Plough Way Cafe,
a lovely local Italian

The
next morning, Saturday, I marshalled at the Southwark Park Run, where
my sister is an organiser. Park Run
is now an international event taking place in public parks across the
world- a 5K dash through a local park, where your time is recorded
and stored, meaning you could beat a PB in any Parkrun provided you
have your assigned unique barcode. As a volunteer, I stood at a fork
in a path, pointed people the right way and shouted encouragements at
runners- many of whom were dressed as Santa.

Good
fun. More so than running. We then dropped into another pub with the
Parkrun team, then said our goodbyes. Before leaving the city, we
found another contrast- Surrey Docks Farm, a local petting zoo of sorts, found
right at the foot of Canary Wharf. We said hi to the goats, sheep,
geese, turkeys, chickens and what I assumed was a ferret. Very
therapeutic. There were a few festive stalls to wander around this
particular Saturday.

We had a fantastic day
welcoming lots of visitors to our Christmas Fair on Saturday.
🎄❄️🦃🎅🏼🎁A
big THANK YOU to everyone who visited, volunteered &
supported the Farm! pic.twitter.com/7bSQRdZzxj

Would You Like to Write for Power is a State of Mind?

Here at PIASOM I'm looking for guest bloggers to get involved. I want you to:1) Tell the world about the superb city of Greater Manchester. If know of something quirky, awesome, bizzare or important happening, why not get involved?2) Show me your ideas of producing great literature. Do you perform excercises at a writing group? Do you compete in poetry slams / rap battles? Are you setting up a magazine? Tell me and get your writing seen. More info:http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2011/03/would-you-like-to-write-for-power-is.html